Grisslehamn
Murielle, Mike and I finally put the misery of Grepen Marin behind us on Monday, June 27th, motoring down towards Grisslehamn, which is about 19nm SSE. But due to our late start and my taking inadvertently taking a wrong turn because I was so fixated on what work the boat still needed, we didn’t make it into the harbor at Grisslehamn until almost midnight. Fortunately my companions are easy going and flexible, and for them the beauty of the Swedish countryside was still a novelty so there were no complaints or gripes. And after tying up we cracked open some wine, and put on some music while I made dinner, Swedish meatballs and new potatoes, content to final be on our journey. I say finally. It was really a delay of little more than 24 hours for my guests, but for me it felt longer because of the stress of managing both agonizing foot pain and the management at Grepen Marin.
Blidö
We all slept well, and Tuesday 28th dawned bright and sunny. Mike is an avid runner and he was able to diagnose my foot pain as plantar fasciitis. It is common among middle aged men and runners in particular and he showed me some simple exercises to mitigate the pain, but recommended I ask my next crew to bring me over some Superfeet brand shoe inserts, and the newest good athletic shoes I owned. I could also have taken a detour to a big town and bought a new pair and tried to some source some orthotic inserts, but I did not want to delay my crew any longer.
Mike and Murielle spent an hour wandering around the tiny town, which is divided into an eastern and western harbor. The eastern side opens into the Baltic and is well served by car ferries from across the Baltic, meaning it’s you see lots of camper vans from Finland, Poland and the Baltic States, for whom the first step is often the campground on the western side, which overlooks our berth. But there is no easy sea access between the two sides unless you are on a dinghy or other low-slung craft. Our next stop was Blidö, some 33nm distant if we took the inside passage, rather than retracing some of our steps northwards to get out into the Baltic proper. But given that this would have meant facing 30kt headwinds with a new crew and an untuned rig AND added another 15 miles to the passage it was a no-brainer to simply fire up the iron jenny and take a gentle ride through the inside route, known as the Vaddö Canal, where the wind was calm, the water flat and the countryside in full bloom. There are only two lifting bridges to negotiate here, and after an uneventful day we found ourself at the waterside town of Graddö at the mouth of the inlet to Norrtalje, from there we turned to port and followed the coastline down to the island of Blidö, whose namesake gasthamn (guest harbor) I have visited several times and always enjoyed…until now.
Turned out it too had changed owners, and while the new trustees were pleasant enough, it was early in the season for them and they had not routed the fresh water supply to the dock nor installed the orange stern buoys after their winter maintenance. On the plus side their excellent restaurant was open, as was their free laundry facilities and wifi. About a mile down the road is a well-stocked ICA supermarket, so after a quiet night on the boat we rose early on Wednesday 29th, did a quick provision stop and cast off for Paradiset, about 11 nautical miles to the south.
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